The Sound of his Heartbeat
by smaragdbird
Summary: 7000 years ago, the first king swore his allegiance to Drake and Drake loved him for it. Now he met his descendant and can't stop thinking about him. Slash


"_Why is it unfair to you when it's me who has been waiting centuries for you?"_

7000 years ago a man had been born whose name was Alulim, the first king of kienĝir or Sumer as the people of this time called it.

Drake remembered Alulim, the first King so to speak, not an attractive man both by the standards of then and now but beautiful in his own way with the contradictory mixture of devotion and defiance burning inside him. He had kneeled at Drake's feet and vowed his and his family's allegiance to Drake but he had looked up with the brightly burning eyes of a proud man. Drake thought that Alulim might have been in love with him because Drake certainly had been. More than once he had asked, demanded even tried to coerce Alulim into letting him turn him but Alulim had never given in and Drake, as much as he didn't like it, had respected his wish.

Alulim had set an example for the relationship between vampire and what would be called familiars and he had raised his first children to uphold that relationship in the same way: that the bonds between empires and humans had to be created by strong emotions.

Many of the humans that had served Drake before he went to sleep had been Alulim's descendants, protected and treasured, loyal until their death. All of them had been proud but in none of them Drake had found the spirit of the first King. A man so devoted to him that he had defied him time and again when he thought it was necessary. He hadn't been a follower; he had been Drake's protector by all means necessary, someone who had never bowed down, who had never flinched in the face of Drake's anger. As the term 'familiar' denoted Alulim had been an integral part of Drake's life.

The Drake had gone to sleep and he was woken up by vampires that were weak, vain creatures and the descendants of Alulim had long ceased to serve them, maybe already extinguished by these spineless, worthless shadows of what vampires were supposed to be.

That was until Drake had seen Hannibal King on the other side of the office and despite his physical attractiveness his bright, defiant, dark eyes were the spitting image of his ancestor's ones. Alulim's blood had called to him through the centuries and made him find his descendant. It had amused him that 7000 years after Alulim had lived his descendants wore the name King but Drake had always known that the gods or fate or whatever one may call it, had a twisted sense of humour. Why else should he had fallen in love with the only human who had never bowed to his will?

Then he had Alulim's descendant against him and the smell of him was both overwhelming and familiar: clover, cinnamon and earth. Drake didn't wonder how that was possible because he knew the answer already: fate. He was the first vampire and Alulim had been the first familiar. Now he was awake again and so was Alulim. Drake, who had been raised with the names of the gods and goddesses of the Levant, had never heard of reincarnation before he woke up in this time but with Alulim's smell in his nose and the old song of his blood in his ears, he had no doubt that it existed.

Drake had no equal in this world but Hannibal King, like his ancestor would be a challenge, would remain unbroken at the core and he would be Drake's.

That night Drake dreamed about him. He was familiar with the scene, an old memory from his early ages but instead of Alulim's face he saw Hannibal's. Hannibal, who looked so out of place in his modern clothes but yet for Drake's instincts, he fit in flawlessly. He even smelled him in his dreams again: clover from the garden, earth from his home and cinnamon from the long forgotten tea that Alulim had loved so much.

Drake woke up; breathing fast and shallow, but the feeling didn't leave him with the dream. He still had the smell in his nose and heard the song of Hannibal's blood, heard his heartbeat as if he was lying next to him. His and Alulim's relationship had never been a sexual one, partly because of the time and the beliefs they had both grown up with, partly because Alulim had been bound, happily bound, with his wife and his family. Here in this time, in this life, he desired the touch of Hannibal King's body over everything else. Maybe because different than his ancestor Hannibal was a handsome man, maybe because it had been too long since Drake had smelled that particular smell. He didn't even have to close his eyes to imagine it: the bitter and spicy yet rich smell of cinnamon in his hair from where the tea's steam had been caught when it was rising from the mug; sweet – scented clover blossoms mixed with the pleasant, cool smell of clover leaves in the hollow of his neck, so strong that Drake would be able to taste it on his tongue but not only there. It would be on his shoulders too, and on his arms. His fingers would be bathed in the sweetness of clover flowers and in the dip of his spine between his shoulder blades Drake would find the leaves again. He would follow down the line of his spine until the smell of clover would give away to the smell of earth. Earth from home, from his garden filled with the most beautiful flowers of Europe and the Levant, planted on the bodies of his enemies from his human life.

He had lost all that, Alulim to death and Alulim's kingdom to time but the call of blood and scent as strong, strong enough to cross time and space.

Drake may have lost Alulim but he wouldn't lose Hannibal King.


End file.
